I find the Indiana Jones sequels since The Last Crusade has struggled with this. Since Harrison Ford was aging, they had to age the story. Placing him the 50's and 60's. It just isn't as interesting when he isn't fighting Nazis.
I rank them in the order they came out. Crusade has some truly cheesy lines and weirdness with his father's character. Temple is a wonderful knock-back to a different kind of pulp radio drama and while imperfect lots of fun.
In my opinion, the primary thing holding it back is Willie. I know she was playing a type, but she is insufferable every moment she is on screen. I love most of the rest of the movie.
People complaining about Willie remind me of the people on instagram who will see a video of a lady getting in a car crash and comment about how they need to stay quiet. Tf do they expect a pampered actress to do when they get thrown off an elephant or covered with bugs?
I actually thought it had aged quite well. Well yes and no. Aged well in the sense that everything I loved about it I still love, even if its cheesy.
Less so in the sense that it is a product of its time. Probably would not be made in the same way today at all (in terms of its themes, stereotypes, stuff like Indies womanising behaviour). But you can say that about all of them to some extent.
It was still a great movie. The first is always going to be the first, and Last Crusade was a god damn masterpiece. So its the 3rd best of 3 great movies.
And its not like the nazis at the beginning of the last one made the movie any better.
That movie is good but compared to Temple of Doom it's not shit. Plus this dude steals the show in everything he's in, I'm glad to see he came back into acting.
Temple of doom is cheesy and has very awkward pacing.
It can’t decide if it wants to be an adventure story or a horror story and Spielberg even thinks he let his personal issues at the time derail the movie.
I enjoyed it, but last crusade tops it in basic every way
...Literally every Indiana Jones movie is cheesy. You're confusing cheesy with bad and they are not the same thing. Also you cannot say with a straight face that Temple of Doom is MORE cheesy than the Last Crusade. You're just lying to yourself at that point.
Making him a Guatemalan or Hatian getting fucked up in an ICE concentration camp would be lit from a story perspective (cue the rageaholic "x-men is woke now" crowd with zero media literacy skills)
You realize Magneto is basically your "everyone I don't like is a Nazi" type who's become an authoritarian fascist himself out of his inability to see the world in anything other than black and white, right?
All Nazis are radical, but not all radicals are Nazis... MAGA are indeed radical, but they arent Nazis technically.. Nazis are sociallist, is National Socialism. The Republicans and MAGA especially are faaar from being socialist
It had socialist in the name but that’s just something they did in the 20s to attract working class voters. They were absolutely authoritarian fascists, and nationalists
Besides the nazis, it moves him further and further away from the early days of archaeology. Archaeology stopped smashing and grabbing artifacts. Placing him in the 60’s means he’s no longer a legend but the absolute worst at his job
The pulpy style of Indiana Jones COULD have transitioned nicely into the Cold War, I think, but they just didn't do it well. Same thing with aliens as the supernatural macguffin, fits well into 50s B-movie type things.
While the Nazi’s do make amazing villains, I would say the bigger issue is the setting in general. The 1930’s were still an era of adventure and the world was still pretty wild and ungoverned, perfect for an archeologist hunting mystical relics
Once you get to the 50’s and 60’s, all of that was pretty much gone. We were in the Cold War and the space race and the focus was on science/futurology and not the mysticism of the past
So it's time to pass the baton to a newer generation. Like they did in Crystal Skull, Ian McKellen can pass the helmet on to a new actor.
Shia Labeouf was a bad choice, so they can choose someone of Jewish ancestry if they want to fit Magneto...maybe Ezra Miller? I hear he's not up to anything these days.
They easily could have put him up against a secret cabal of Argentine Nazis, especially since KotCS was set largely in South America. Missed opportunity.
Other missed opportunities include: going up against his own government because the US Paperclip Nazis were planning a coup using an ancient artifact, not adapting The Infernal Machine to a screenplay, where the fuck is Short Round?? replace Mutt Williams with Short Round, weird Ka Li Ma effects resurface, one of those CIA guys from Raiders is a secret villain.
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u/Don_Pickleball 8h ago
I find the Indiana Jones sequels since The Last Crusade has struggled with this. Since Harrison Ford was aging, they had to age the story. Placing him the 50's and 60's. It just isn't as interesting when he isn't fighting Nazis.